It's been a while since any of us reported here. Myself I've been actually playing the game these last few weeks. Despite the distasteful vanilla map I wanted to get a feel of how the new tech system impacts the gameplay - and more importantly how this would affect my building system.

One thing I noted is how slow the tech progression is apparently for the AI. Recently conquered regions (I'm the reborn Roman Empire - yesterday I just finished absorbing Scandinavia) show a tech lvl ranging between 1 and 3 - while in Rome (as of 1240) I've reached 5 across the board and 6 in certain key techs. This might be a problem... A lot of buildings depend on higher tech lvls - and that's not counting the differential coded to randomize the appearance of a new tech. In fact I might have been as low as the AI had I not 'cheated' by giving myself loads of cash. Even some of the vanilla buildings recquire higher tech lvls... So I'm not sure how you can reach lvl 8 by 1450 when after 500 years elapsed you're still in the 3 range.

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Regarding my work I have structured the system to have a progression like this:

tech 0-1-2-4-5-6 for the Christians - with differential factor of 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1/0.6tech 0-1-2-3-4-5 for the Muslims - with a similar differential factor

Now if a lvl 5 building recquire tech lvl 5 + 1 diff factor + 1 random addition - that means this building will recquire actual lvl 7 tech lvl to be built.

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Finally I read Paradox has another major update in the works, possibly to make the Church playable... If it's anything like ToG - it will disrupt the game and we'll have - again - to rewrite our mods... With loads of undocumented features of course - that's the Paradox way after all

Bottom line I'm not really rushing to get my part of TPTT out - I don't want to have to redo it all over again in a few weeks.

As you can see - every chain is anchored on a natural landmark - which allows me to add 5 layers of building - in all cases each lvl represent an addition to the same building complex as opposed to different buildings. The exception so far is the Notre-Dame chain - the 2nd lvl was the old 'Cathédrale St-Étienne' - built during Carolingian times and which was razed to be replaced by Notre-Dame itself.

Sadly the same anchor can only be used for one chain so the 'Ile de la Cité' in the Paris barony cannot accommodate the royal palace the Robertians built there before the Capetians built the Louvres. I think I should limit myself to one unique chain per barony.

I was thinking when reading the last bit about Louvre, perhaps that could be instead sort of last level of castle walls, in the same manner as Theodosian walls?

It would be possible yes - that is I'd need to modify the dds file that displays the building lvl since it is now limited to 6 in roman numerals. Another way would be to create another unique landmark chain - however the interface would get cluttered fast since the building system has over 700 different structures (all holding types combined). If you think about it there could be landmarks in most counties - whether natural ones, or ruins, or anything of note really. But we have to draw a line somewhere. In some cases a simple addition to an existing chain can be coded to limit it to a specific barony. For instance the cities have a chain of three churches - you could add another chain of 3 on top of that for special cathedrals for example. I also wanted to get a specifically byzantine building system but the resources available describing and *naming* specific byzantine structures are limited online - at least the free ones.

As I was trying to find something which could be used for landmarks or buildings, I thought once again of something almost totally omited from CK2. Except for few examples (which are churches with this name though), there is not a single monastery. And well considering the settings of the game, I think it quite suffers from the lack of it. The possibilities are large, priories, hermitages, with landmarks such as Kievan Lavra.

Well when I read about the history of the Kremlin it was said the Vyatichi settlement was given a fort when the area came under the control of the principalty of Vladimir-Souzdal - itself a vassal of Kiev at the time. So I followed the historical development of the site and mirrored it in the the 5 layers of buildings anchored on the Borovitsky Hill (see below).

The later developments of the citadel (towers, palaces, churches, etc) are out of scope of the game time frame.

However you may have a point in that certain games will never see Moscow fall in the orbit of Kiev - just like in many of the games I've played starting in 867 - the whole region never becomes Christian. So perhaps I should rename that specific structure.

I'm practically done with the coding and indexing of the building module. However since I don't have the new map it will be based on the vanilla one - at the 867 game start. I am now clearing all the vanilla province files of every references to the vanilla buildings. Tomorrow I'll run this through the Validator and fire a game with it to see what happens.

As for bugs/problems i found so far:-at least for me, some of the pagans get none (tengri) or just one (slavic) buildings only.-zoroastrians use islamic names for their buildings

All buildings are coded to recquire the holder of a province be of a specific religion - hence why Zoroastrians, who are essentially Persians, have been ammalgamated with Muslims. A much bigger issue with religion based prerequisites is that when a province changes hand from a Muslim to a Christian - all previously existing structures are wiped. I originally chose religion as a qualifier since it allowed a greater variety when it comes to naming structures but that problem remains.

Regarding pagans, I had the same reaction when I first loaded the mod as Byzantium - there were no buildings anywhere in pagan lands. That is until I reloaded as a pagan and saw the map was indeed populated according to the technological level. It seems Paradox treats pagans differently - if you're a Christian or a Muslim lord you can see what's in the other believers' territory but not what's in the pagan countries.

There is apparently no way to control the technological level of specific counties so unless I decrease the tech recquirements to allow for more buildings to be constructed at game start we'll have to live with it. However the price of the ealier layers of buildings has been lowered significantly so there are more accessible than the vanilla chains in that regard. Finally I have made extensive use of triggers and prerequisites as you can see in the indexes included in the zip file. This may slow things down for the AI.

I see, thanks for the reply. I'll try to play as pagan to see the buildings.

How about basing it on county religion instead of ruler religion? Especiallly if my suggestions for much slower cultural and religious assimilation (it's ridiculously fast in vanilla) were implemented, the wiping out of cultural buildings would be much slower process.

I've already found the solution - it appears the game allows for renaming of the same structures with the following command:

tp_temple_1;test1tp_temple_1_muslim;test2

So you don't lose your buildings when they change hands. However I've tried with pagan - pagan_group - norse - and it doesn't work. So that means 2 building trees instead of 3. And it makes sense pagan buildings would be torn down when conquered by either Christians or Muslims.

As for the assimilation rates I didn't find anything pertaining to that in defines.lua - through events perhaps? Or elsewhere.

Regarding assimilation, I think it's an event based on ruler's stewardship. That makes for an absurd situation, when I choose high stewardship counts for the newly captured provinces, which then turn my culture even as soon as circa 20 years!

Regardless of the flaw that needs correcting - have you tried the mod to see the flow of things. I'm mostly concerned about how the dependencies work - particularly with the development of cities which recquire several other buildings.